Choose The Fear

In a world that desperately wants to eliminate all fear from our vocabulary and experience, we're confronted with a profound biblical truth: there are two kinds of fear, and we must choose between them. Drawing from Proverbs 1, this message challenges the modern tendency to remove anything that might cause discomfort or anxiety, including biblical concepts like hell, judgment, and the crucifixion. Yet Scripture declares that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom. This isn't about cowering in terror, but about having healthy reverence and respect for an all-powerful, all-knowing, righteous God. When we reject the fear of the Lord, we don't eliminate fear from our lives—we simply default to 'your fear,' which brings desolation, anxiety, panic attacks, and the very phobias our society is drowning in. The message traces powerful moments in the Gospels where disciples didn't just clap and celebrate, but fell on their faces in holy fear—when God spoke audibly, when Jesus calmed the storm, when the woman touched His garment and felt power flow. We've sanitized our Christianity, removing the demonstrations of God's power and the reality of spiritual warfare from our services. But true deliverance from the epidemic of anxiety and fear plaguing our generation comes not from eliminating all fear, but from choosing the right one. When we fear God properly, His perfect love casts out all other fears, and we walk in the freedom and power He intended for His people.